Azure AD Connect to sync users and groups from AAD to local AD

As DirSync and Azure AD Sync will soon be not supported anymore, you should migrate your old DirSync Server to the new Azure AD Connect service. And the Azure AD Connect tool, which is the successor of the Azure AD Sync Service has a couple of new and cool features.

One of these features can develop to a real killer feature in some enterprises – Sync cloud users and groups to the on-premise Active Directory. As with the new Office 365 Groups a new group type joins Distribution and Security Groups in the cloud, the ability to sync these cloud groups back to the local AD, the enterprises do not have to go without the Office 365 groups in their local AD.

Unfortunately the Office 365 group type is not part of the Microsoft Active Directory yet, but the Office 365 Groups, which are synchronized to the local AD are transformed to normal Distribution Groups, which then in turn, can be used in an on-premise Exchange deployment. In the future, these groups will may be integrated in the on-premise Active Directory and will replace the Security and Distribution Groups.

The same feature was published for users. Office 365 customers have now the ability to synchronize users, who were created in the cloud, to the local AD and use them for their on-premise applications. This leads to the fact, that you can create and manage users everywhere and do not need to be connected to your on-premise domain controller. Unfortunately you can, at the moment, only select one organizational unit to which the users get synchronized.

But as these features get updated in the future, I will provide you with detailed information as soon as the updates get announced, so stay on reading…